//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: Miles Away 
// by Bucket of Skies 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 2

Stepping out of my house, I was greeted with the humidity of the hot, moist Hoovesiana air. I didn’t mind the humidity of the air, my real main problem with where I lived were two things: the ponies, and the rain. 
I lived in the Southernmost part of Hoovesiana, being New Saddle, probably the only town that never got to learn about friendship with other species. In most places in Hoovesiana, there was never any Speciesism between Species. New Saddle must have not gotten the message of ,” Hey, it doesn’t matter whether you are a Pony, Dragon, or Griffon. We are all the same on the inside”. Although there was no real discrimination regarding work for other species, there was still Speciesism among the Dragons and Griffons. One such example of this, last week there was a drug house filled with many crackhead Unicorns. They were caught by the local law enforcement and sent to the jail for about 5 months. Two days ago a Griffon walking down the street wearing a hoodie, shot dead by the local law enforcement for “suspicion of a weapon”. Pure Speciesism at its finest.
Besides the Speciesism, the other thing that bothered me about living Hoovesiana was the rain. For those who don’t know, Hoovesiana was prone to “The Great Storm of Kat.” The storm almost nearly flooded all of the Southern part of Hoovesiana, while taking away hundreds of poor ponies lives. I remember when I was around five when it had happened being scared for my life. Luckily both my parents thought ahead of time and boarded up the house and made us stay in the attic until the storm had passed. We had a lot of water damage to the house once the storm had passed, but sadly some others weren’t so lucky as us to only have water damage. Ever since then every time it would rain in New Saddle, everypony would run for the highest point and hope it doesn’t flood.
My trot to work wasn’t long, it doesn’t even take me five minutes to get there. As I approach the block where the bakery was, I could see the sign of the bakery read the same thing it always read,” Cakes+Confections: Old Fashioned Cakes Since 1923”. Cakes+Confections is probably the longest bakery to ever be in business in New Saddle. While other bakeries drop dead after about 5 years, Cakes+Confections had been in business for over 80 years, and is showing no signs of going out of business for a while. The secret to staying in business for so long: Family Business. The business was started by the rich and charismatic stallion, Apple Cobbler. He ran the business for over 40 years before he had died. The one to take control of the business was none other than his filly, Berry Cobbler. It remains like that to this day, with the owner being the filly of the late Plum Cobbler, Peach Cobbler.
Peach was a pretty fair, and one would say nice boss. She was a mare who was very straight-forward with her management. I guess after working in the same business for over 35 years, you start to know what to fix in the business. Her management is best described as a “First Name Basis” management. In other words, your name will dictate what you will most likely work. For example, Donut Glaze is in charge of donuts, Pipsqueak is in charge of cupcakes, and Peach being in charge of the cobbler. I bet you can’t guess what I’m in charge of, $10 says you can’t.
Stepping inside the bakery, I am hit with the smell of baked dough and syrup. Obviously the smell of the cobbler being made. With nopony out front, I figure that it is only me and Peach Cobbler. I step into the door that leads to the back where I can reach my locker filed with my stuff, only to find full tray of freshly cooked cobbler. With seeing this I at first freeze in fear. Remember how I said that Peach was a pretty nice boss? Well, there is one thing that I kind of forgot to mention, out of all her rules for work she has one that is the most strict of all: Never ever be alone with the cobbler. She has said to anypony that works here that if they are caught alone with any amount of cobbler without her presence at anytime, she would fire them on the spot. Her reasoning is for this rule is to keep the world famous family recipe for their cobbler a secret from competition. At first, some of you might be thinking that’s a little bit of a stupid rule, but let me tell you from what I have seen, you will quickly change your mind when seeing her lose her shit on somepony yourself. I had seen a pony by the name of Churro be destroyed by Peach, the poor bastard could barely keep a straight face walking out of the bakery.
I slowly catch my breath as I realize the situation I am in. I look around for the lockers so I could quickly get the shit out of there before Peach sees me. My forehead was beginning to have a cold sweat in trying to find the lockers.
”Where are those god damn lockers? It’s not like the business has changed overnight. It might change with a loss of 
an employee if I don’t find those fucking lockers”, I say to myself as my hooves start shaking.
I spotted the lockers by the corner and begin to trot over to them quickly. As I get halfway across the room to the locker, Peach Cobbler came around the corner carrying extra pans and trays. I froze out of fear thinking it was the end of me. 
“Whoa! Velvet, you scared me”, Peach said  jumping from fear, nearly dropping the trays in her hooves.
I give her an empty, petrified stare, almost tearing up. She then gave me a concerning look tilting her head sideways. 
“Hey, is there something wrong? You look like you have seen a ghost.”, she says walking up to me slowly. I stammer for about a couple of seconds before Peach stops me,”Hey, it’s okay to tell me Sugar”. 
It took me by complete surprise! When I was expecting a good ol’ ,”You're fired, get the hell out” she said the one thing that always comforts ponies who are upset : Sugar. When I heard her say that, I built up the courage to say what was wrong.
”I-I was um, I was coming in and I saw the tray of cobbler and I-I got scared that you would come in and f-f-fire me since I was alone with the tray and you have those set of rules and...” I trailed off out of anxiety until I felt Peach’s hoof place on my chin and tilted my head up. 
“Velvet, You don’t need to worry about that rule with me, I trust you wouldn’t steal the recipe”, Peach says reassuringly.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The one pony who made the most strict rule of work was letting me pass on breaking the rule. I stood there shocked until I snapped back to reality and moved toward my locker. I still couldn’t figure it out yet, why would me, out of all the ponies that worked there, would she let have a pass on the rule. As Peach set down the pans and trays to pick up the fresh cobbler, I finally broke the one question that was starting to burn a hole in my mind. 

“Hey Peach, why did you give me a pass on the ‘not being alone with the cobbler’ rule?”, I ask her confused
She looks at me with a somewhat confused look,”Well, didn’t I just tell you Sugar? I trust you the most.”
”Well yes you did, but why do you trust me the most out of all the other workers?”, I elaborate.
Peach set down the cobbler then trotted over to me and said with a very sincere voice,”Velvet, I have worked here for over 35 years. Out of all my coworkers I had worked with, you parents were the most trustworthy out of all of them. I know that they raised you the exact same way.” 
Peach and my parents were best friends for the longest time up until they had died. Going back to what I was saying about her being nice, she was the one who helped me out the most through losing my parents. She had even offered me to live with her instead of being alone in the house. I had turned it down due to me wanting to live on my own. In a lot of ways, I considered her my second mother.
Right as I was about to say how much gratitude I had from her trusting me that much, the other workers had come in and were getting ready for work. At this moment, I had gathered myself and got my stuff in my locker. In my locker, it consisted of baking supplies like a apron and hairnet. I had also had my father’s old music player that had a lot of my favorite music on there. Once I had gathered my stuff, I headed to the front where we have our daily meetings before the bakery opens for business. The meetings are roughly the same message everyday,”Everypony work hard, and it will be a good day”. Once the meeting was wrapped up, I head to my station in the back to begin making the red velvet cakes.
For anypony who thinks that red velvet cake is chocolate cake with white frosting and red food coloring, fuck you. It is way more complex than that. The first thing that I do when making red velvet cake is to mix in the batter, which consists of sugar, butter, and at least two eggs , then mix it with flour. Once it is mixed up, you would pour in a little bit of both cocoa and vanilla into the creamed mixture to make it kind of a burgundy color. Then pour in milk and put in the oven at 350 degrees for about a half hour. Take that anti red velvet cake ponies! I just debunked your whole propaganda.
Once I finish putting it in the oven, I usually sit down and listen to my father’s music on his old E.pod and draw while listening to his music. His E.pod has over 3,000 songs on there, and I still haven’t gone through all of it. One band that my father liked, and has passed as a personal favorite for me, was “Smashing Melons”. They have a lot of very good songs, most of them coming from the 90s. In my opinion, their second album “Siamese Sadness” was their best one. I don’t know why, but every song on that album would always cheer me up, even the more messed up, happy sounding ones.
Once time would pass, I would hear the timer go off and take the now baked velvet cake out of the oven. Using my magic, I would then take the cake off to the side where all the icing would be and cover it in a white layer of frosting. Once a good layer is lathered on, I take the burgundy frosting in the baster to line the edges of the cake with icing. This step is very tedious, because if you do it to fast, it makes the cake look uneven. If the cake looks uneven, it goes in the trash and back to square one you go. Luckily, I’m very patient with my magic, so this step doesn’t hinder me. Once the Icing is all done, it is sent up front on display for ponies to get. The wash, rinse, repeat.
After about 5 hours of working in the morning shift, we close up shop from around 11:30 am to 1:00 pm for us to have our lunch break before the next shift starts. Most of the other workers leave to go get something to eat that is close in town. I usually stay to eat in the bakery because of my whole ‘public anxiety’ problem I have. For lunch, it is always the same: One sliced turkey and lettuce sandwich. I keep it simple, not too extravagant. I took my lunch in the front of the bakery and sat at one of the tables near the window. I had even brought my art book with me to have something to do after I finish lunch.
I had finished lunch and began drawing in my art book. A lot of my art was kind of abstract, not a lot of ponies would understand it. Abstract art was my favorite one to create because it didn’t have to involve a lot of creativity, apart from deciding colors. Plus for some reason, abstract art was more emotional than art that has a subject.
As I was scribbling something down in my art book, I jumped at the sound of a door opening from the back. It was Peach holding two cupcakes.
She had trotted over to where I was sitting then stopped to glance at my art book. “You mind if I sit with you sugar?” she says. 
“Of course not Peach”, I say to her moving my pencils and pens from the otherside of the table.
She sat down in front of me and slid over one of the cupcakes she had brought from the back,”You feel hungry?” she asks me. 
I take the cupcake and say thank you. 
“So Velvet, how have you been? It feels like a mighty long time since I last visited with you.”, Peach says as she takes the wrapper off of the cupcake. 
“Well nothing much. Really it’s the same old as always.”, I say after taking a bite of the cupcake she had given me.
“Oh, well I guess that’s good, you’re not getting into any trouble so that's good “, Peach says with a little bit of cupcake in her mouth.
I always enjoyed these small moments with Peach, she would make me feel like home when I would speak with her. 
As I finished my cupcake, she had glanced down at my art book again and asked,”Is it ok if I look through it?” 
I gave her a slight nod with a light blush going across my face. I was always somepony who was always nervous of what other ponies think of the stuff I would create. Another side effect to having public anxiety. 
Peach had flipped through a couple of them and gave them an approving nod. 
Scratching the back of my neck, I ask,”D-Do they look okay?” 
“Okay? These are the best darned drawings I have seen in a while, some should be posted on the art trot someday”, Peach says holding some of them up to show me.
I chuckled nervously then responded,”Heh, yeah. Maybe one day.” 
Peach had given me kind of a concerned look. This was a look I was so used to. Peach had sighed then looked up at me. 
“Velvet, I know that tone all too well”, she says crossing her hooves together. 
“What do you mean?”, I asked in a confused voice. 
“Don’t act like you don’t know. You are a really talented unicorn. Your drawings are wonderful, and yet you always doubt yourself. You can’t just sit there and doubt yourself that these are not good drawings. You know deep down you have the talent to make it out there. All you have to do is try.”, Peach says looking at me with eyes that will burn a hole in you. 
That was another thing about her that made her feel like my second mother, her lectures would always get to me. Whether its my doubt, or before my work ethic, it always got through with me.
“Okay, Peach. I’ll consider turning in one to the art trot”, I say with  a somewhat distraught voice. 
“Good”, Peach says before a slight grin goes across her face.
“Well, it’s about to be time when the afternoon shift begins. I’ll let you get ready. Don’t you forget about what I said now”, Peach says standing up to move to the door to the back of the bakery.
“I won’t”, I say as I begin to gather my things and throw my wrapper to my cupcake away.
The afternoon shift was mostly the same, only with a few more customers than usual ordering red velvet cakes. The time runs by a lot faster in this shift in my opinion, mainly because I only work 3 hours in the shift. 
At the end of my shift, I began to start to save my things in my locker and head out for the night. I met with Peach to collect my paycheck for the day.
“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow at work Peach.”, I say to Peach as I use my magic to grab the paycheck. 
She had snapped the check in mid air right before it had gotten passed her and gave me a look. “Velvet, I want you to take the day off tomorrow.”, she says holding on to the check with an iron grip. “They are having the submission for the art trot tomorrow, I expect you to enter one of your drawings in. Understand?”, She says while cocking an eyebrow at me. 
“Yes ma’am, I will submit one of them.”, I say itching to leave. 
Ok, Have a good night sugar.”, she says as she finally lets go of the paycheck I was trying to grab. As I put the check into the bag I had with me, I made a trot to the door and began to trot home. Now was the time for the moment I was waiting for. Time for the quest of getting the golden fork.